


The Day After Forever

by roseveare



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Post-finale (ish)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8350459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseveare/pseuds/roseveare
Summary: Ghosting around Haven sucks, but it's a toss-up whether Nathan's current state of existence is any better, and Croatoan and Vince are driving poor Audrey around the bend. Something's got to give.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jadzibelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadzibelle/gifts).



> Hopefully an antidote to bitter endings. Replaces most of the content of the last 2 minutes of the finale.

Nathan dug himself up from the chasm slowly, carefully, hand-over-hand, testing each hand and foot hold before he risked trusting his full weight to it. It was a painstakingly slow process without the instinctive grip and balance provided by a sense of touch. But then, he had no need to worry about pain or effort becoming a distraction. He worked methodically.

Every so often, he paused to give an experimental shout for Duke or Audrey. They had not been standing so far away when this Trouble hit, and he was deeply concerned as to what had become of them. Were they at the top, looking for him, too distant to hear his shouts, or for him to hear them call out in return? Or were they trapped and perhaps unconscious somewhere?

He froze in place as he realised that _up_ might not be the direction he needed to go to find them.

Taking as firm a hold as he could be sure of, he carefully adjusted his posture so he could look back over his shoulder, down into the depths of the chasm... It was too far down for him to work out any details of what lay at the bottom for all the shadows that gathered there.

Little as he liked to think it, the only direction there was any point in him trying to go here was _up_. If anyone had fallen down when the, what, earthquake Trouble?, had struck... anyone _not Duke and Audrey_... they would have to return with climbing equipment and experts to retrieve the bodies. No, Nathan needed to find out what was happening amongst the living.

He edged his head back around and fixed his gaze upward instead.

As he reached for the next handhold, lightning seemed to split his brain. Pain shot through his head -- pain where there should be _none_ \-- and a voice echoed. His own voice. His rational, questioning mind asked him, _What are you doing, Wuornos?_

The reply seemed obvious. The earthquakes, the devastation. He needed to first rescue himself, and then to help others. There had been a Trouble. There was _always_ a--

 _There are no Troubles anymore_.

The walls of the chasm were crumbling. His grip, already precarious, slipped. Nathan scrambled, fighting desperately to reclaim it, making his fingers bleed as they scraped at rock that gave way beneath them. He had one foot wedged but his body was falling backwards from the side of the chasm... Then his hands were too far clear for him to reach, and only the fall lay beneath him, and the world _dropped_.

He woke to bright daylight in his own bed, with the kick of his abrupt exit from the dream a shockwave through his body. He ached faintly with the exertions of a body that hadn't taken care of itself with a nervous system newly restored.

Nathan groaned and covered his face. The daylight was bright, the Troubles were over, Haven was safe... and he still felt like he was lying broken at the bottom of that chasm.

***

Duke had run short pretty quickly on things to do in Haven when you were dead. Now, he just drifted through the days -- and nights, because _sleep_ wasn't so much a thing anymore -- and let them come and go as they pleased. He watched people, occasionally kept up a running commentary as if they could hear him and talk back, as only a select few could, which tended to be narrowed down to Gloria mostly, these days, and kicking gin-soaked conversation back and forth in the very quiet morgue. Not-talking had never been a particular character trait in his possession, but being dead had proved to be a muting experience. Even aside from how he now didn't have to-- how there was _no point_ in him moving his lips these days.

In the very first few minutes of his new un-life on that hillside, he'd discovered he had to sort of _think_ at Dwight because he couldn't get words to emerge from his lips without lungs made of genuine physical substance that could manipulate air.

No air to speak of, you might sa-- ah, you might put it.

He worried a bit about spending time with Gloria. Couldn't help but think it was counter to her mental health to abuse that connection. Did his mental health matter, now he was _dead_?

He'd experienced as a spectator the anticlimax of _winning_. A hollow victory, where Audrey didn't even get to stay. Dying had hurt -- and _sucked_ \-- but not as much as watching Audrey forced to give in and go back into another supernatural prison. But then, who was he to complain? What had he done if not the same? Giving in...

Hadn't seemed like there was much point doing anything else in the moment, but days removed from the crushing weight of Croatoan's influence on his mind, days that _stretched on_ as he discovered the limits of his world now, Duke had come to the conclusion that he could have fought harder.

Didn't help. He'd needed the distance to build the resolve: Croatoan riding his head had been _devastating_. In the moment, it had been impossible to give any more than he had. Things happened as they happened, and now here he was and here they were.

Duke trudged through the streets of Haven, a disconsolate phantom. Every so often, one of the people who hurried through him on their way about their own day paused, and shivered or looked back as if they did realise on some level that he was there. But the people who could sense even that much were few and far between, and seemed to be getting fewer as the hyper state of the Troubles unravelled from everybody's stressed out brains and people started to return to... something resembling a _normal_. In as much, Duke supposed, as any of those people would ever again attain a 'normal'.

There were fewer of those folks anyway. He watched too the exodus of the people of Haven who they'd fought for, leaving in droves now that they could, the formerly Troubled, unTroubled and only very lately Troubled alike. Duke couldn't blame them. In so many ways their town had become a prison. Even before they were hemmed in by the fog.

And this... was a new world. Surely a _better_ world, and so surely he had to conceed it sour grapes if his place in it _sucked ass_. People weren't dying every day anymore. You had to call it an improvement when the police station boards no longer kept a tally of a daily town death toll.

There came a morning, a few months down the line, when the calendar said _February_ (although otherwise it was becoming hard to keep track of the passage of time), where Duke moseyed into the now-very quiet morgue building to find Gloria tapping her heels in her lab.

"Duke?" Her head came up. She looked around. Looked... right past him, in the sweep of her cocked head. And he knew then, really. "Duke, is that you? I should tell you, you're not gonna catch me here often, now. Ain't too much need for a coroner in town, these days. I'm down to two mornings... plumped for afternoons, but that's the asshats who run the new town council for ya." She shook her head. "And it'll be Intern on call most the rest of the week -- Vickie's learned a lot. All that hands-on experience." She snorted.

 _I can always pop by your home_ , Duke thought-said. Hoping.

Gloria looked around and shook her head again. "Guess it wasn't him, after all," she muttered, and turned her back.

Resigned, Duke watched his last connection to reality shuffle away from him.

***

Winter fell full upon Haven without Audrey, without Duke, and the season passed while Nathan was still grieving. Icy roads and blackouts and a population already tired from suffering who were yet locked in again by snow. Nathan, able to feel the cold once more, barely noticed it and barely cared. The end of the Troubles should bring hope, _relief_ of some kind, but he was too weary for hope and wasn't sure he knew what relief was anymore. Sometimes he felt as though he'd swapped lack of feeling outside for a lack of feeling inside.

He took the callouts, watched the population getting smaller and then regroup as word got out how cheap real estate was in Haven. New faces came to town who'd never seen the Troubles, who hadn't been there, who didn't understand.

Dwight retired, to Nathan's protests. Not that Dwight was built to be a leader in peacetime, not that Nathan didn't officially resume his father's role with a kind of needy desperation to fill those shoes better, this time. But they needed all the hands they could get. Though he had to admit amid his griping that it wasn't like Dwight wouldn't still be helping the rebuilding efforts as a civilian.

Nathan feared he'd start to forget Audrey and Duke. It was both a harrowing night and a gift he fiercely clung to whenever they showed up in his dreams. He wanted to hear their voices again, to feel their closeness, even if it was only in his own dream-state.

But in his worst dream, Duke and Audey lay dead, even though he'd only seen Duke so pale and lifeless in reality. Nathan was left trying in vain to save them with his police-trained CPR. Desperately, he breathed for them, beat their hearts for them, throughout the night until morning. He woke up exhausted.

He felt so _helpless_. What difference had he made, in the end? Surely there was something he could have done to save them, some different choice he could have taken that would have sidestepped this fate?

The chance was lost, long gone and ever receeding. Winter in Haven turned to spring and things got at least externally easier, barring the odd spring storm. Some of the newcomers proved willing recruits to HPD, happy to find work in their new home town, far away from whatever in their old lives had sent them running to Haven... Must be something, for them to take such a risk and relocate to a place so recently destroyed. The explanation released to the outer world involved freak storms and landslips.

Nathan kept a box of Audrey's things he'd managed to recover over the winter, a sparse scattering of memories. The things that were left, the few he'd found clearing up his house and the wreckage of the _Gull_ later. It was remarkable and depressing how little sign was left of her ever having been there. Unexpectedly, in the aftermath, as people found out what he was trying to do, he was presented with photographs he hadn't known existed, surprising blurry and fragmented glimpses. He and Audrey had always had too much to think about to take mementos. But they'd been captured in the edges of other peoples', all the same.

When they cleared the _Gull_ , even before the wreck divers had reached the _Cape Rogue_ , he realised heavily that he needed a second box for Duke.

Nathan tried hard to reach back for the good times, for the _were_ some buried amid it all, when he held Audrey and Duke in his thoughts. He wanted to remember with happiness; they deserved that from him. Remember with pride, for they had stopped the Troubles, after all. But it was _so hard_. Most times he just found himself moping over his boxes of half-destroyed, water-damaged trinkets, and photos with Audrey or Duke caught unawares in the background of some half stranger's snap, alone in his home in the dark and long evenings.

***

There were times when it crossed Audrey's mind again that she had hoped for -- expected -- _more_.

Sometimes was usually, inexplicably, while she was trying to interact with the matrix of the armoury. Fine-tuning the aether that constructed the transdimensional prison was something both Croatoan and Vince had been trying to teach her. Separately, and in wildly different and often contradictory fashions.

It came to her this time, as ever, as the vaguest of thoughts. This was, in fact, a job which required concentration, and was probably actually the most intense and interesting part of her life in the Armoury.

 _Life!_ her inner voice mocked. This wasn't life, it was no more than _the passage of time_.

It gave her pause, even in the midst of her task.

No puzzles here, her brain's inner voice pointed out. No friends here, nor lovers. _No-one_ to love. Just eternity with the bickering of two old men who had their own agendas for her. She wasn't Mara any longer, that she should be exiled and punished. She wasn't Mara that Croatoan should have any claim to her, though he'd argue the point verbosely. She wasn't Mara that Croatoan should be her _responsibility_.

She hesitated, in touch with the raw aether of the Armoury, brain buzzing with thoughts she had at no other time and wondered, suddenly, _Why_?

"Don't stay too long in there!" Croatoan's mellow voice called cajolingly. "It's probably not safe even for you, Dove."

 _Yet it's apparently the only place where I can_ think _properly_ , Audrey thought. The cross, impulsive thought took deeper root in her mind and she drew in a hard, shaky breath and responded, "I'm fine. Don't distract me."

She had the vague sense that Croatoan held up his palms in bumbling surrender and backed off, but also she had an impression that unease lay beneath his superficial affableness.

 _So what is it you're so worried about, 'daddy' dear_?

The aether sang through her. The freedom and strength of it reminded her of something she'd felt elsewhere, in another life, in a time far away. She reached down through vague impressions that resolved toward a name: _Nathan_...

"Your father's concerned, and I am too, a little. You're spending _much_ too much time doing that, Audrey." Vince had been roped into the effort too, now. Audrey sighed.

"Go away, Vince. I'm thinking. And don't call Croatoan that." _I never knew my father. I never wanted Mara's_.

The aether flexed, reminding her of life... a life worth the name. A life that was _real_ and not created with a thought. She could feel new resolve respond from within her. Underneath it, rising, the discordant voices of the old men sounded like squawking crows fighting over scraps. Croatoan was displeased that Vince had failed and insisting he should try again harder. Vince belligerently told him to do it himself. It was all so-- _they_ were so--

\--so _tedious_.

Something in Audrey snapped.

The energies she bathed in flickered and snapped, too. She saw, for the first time since she'd entered the Armoury, a new twist in the mechanism: a pathway, a _gap_.

She was speaking to, so far as she could tell, nothing more than the aether-construct of the Armoury itself when she asked, breathlessly, "You don't need me here anymore to function. Do you?"

It stirred with an unease almost akin to Croatoan's, though she supposed it made sense that they share characteristics. But the creation proved itself morally superior to its creator. It wanted her and was attached to her, that much she could see. Aether _always_ wanted to be her friend, like drawn to like and thanks to Croatoan she had it within the fabric of her being. But... it reluctantly admitted that she was right; it didn't _need_ her. Not anymore.

It opened up a path, widening it as she worried about the tight fit. _If you need to_ , it said, _I can let you go_.

Audrey needed... to take a damn minute. She had no idea how long she'd been in this virtual white box, but she'd surely earned a break by now. She pushed off for the gap in construct and let go.

She thought she heard denial and dismay in the cries of the two old men that rose in protest as the Armoury vanished from around her, but on the other hand, they could've just been starting to fight. Again.

***

Audrey stage whispered, " _I'm an escapee, you know_."

Duke blinked and looked around carefully before returning his eyes to the apparition. Being something of an apparition himself, he wasn't convinced _he_ should be seeing her in quite this way. Could a ghost be haunted? He leaned in to respond in the same tone back to her, " _Good for you. Am I supposed to be hallucinating if I'm already dead?_ "

Her forehead wrinkled. She looked oddly upset, for a spectre. "I'd... forgotten that you died. Is that really right, because you look pretty real to me here and now? Are you getting mixed up, or... am I getting mixed up? I do sort of remember it, now."

Duke stared back at her. "Well, that could be called vaguely insensitive."

"I'm sorry, alright?" She got visibly flustered, her hands drawing shapes on the air. "It was confusing in the Armoury. Time didn't work properly. It was all dead white space and Vince and Croatoan either arguing or being so unbelievably _dull_ , and I know I was supposed to stay to protect Haven, and it was _so_ risky to chance leaving, but -- I had to get out of there, Duke, because otherwise I was going to go completely _mad_. And when it gave me the chance--"

"I'm not offended," Duke choked. "More kind of..." He stopped. He was still very suspicious of all this. Not the least Audrey's kookiness, though that might be in character if she'd spent months getting her brain numbed in a white space. The Barn of Duke's own memory, when Nathan had just shot Howard and he'd jumped in after her, had been the definition of mind-numbing. And that was before factoring in months and months spent only in the company of the double act of Croatoan and Vince. Duke winced. "You're really here? Because I'm thinking my hallucination would probably tell me that just as earnestly."

She rolled her eyes, and continued, "So I stepped out of the Barn. Vince and Croatoan were yelling. I don't know if they actually noticed what I was doing, or if it was just yelling at each other. I don't even think I meant to really leave, not for _good_ , but--" She lifted her hands helplessly. "It's gone. I can't find it. Can't follow it. There's no trace."

Duke shook his head. "I'm _really_ not buying this. Duke Crocker's world doesn't work like this. Wake up, Duke." He slapped himself in the face a few times. "More like I've finally gone crazy, is what I think. It's probably overdue."

"A little more support wouldn't go amiss," Audrey said narrowly. "I followed the only aether-trace I could find to you. I expected the Armoury. Which leads me to ask, why weren't you pulled out of Haven with the rest of the aether?"

"Stubbornness?" Duke shifted to look back at the sunrise momentarily, but Audrey was more diverting than what had become his routine of watching dawn rise over Haven. His chosen spot was the old Lookout. The bench hadn't survived, and hadn't yet been replaced, but someone had decided it was a great place to plant a lot of new saplings that would in a few short years destroy its function as a viewpoint.

"To be accurate, I'm thinking your stubborn will to look out for Nathan," Audrey said. "Since you can work aether somehow, even if involuntarily, and still seem to be powered by aether, and aether is controlled by will."

Duke huffed. "No gaps in your memory of what happened to _Nathan_ , then?"

"Oh, shut up." She sighed. "A lot's coming back, now. I think the Armoury or Croatoan might have been playing with my mind to make me more content in there. To stop me wanting to come back. Maybe if they hadn't shot themselves in the foot by being so infuriating, it would have worked and I'd still be in there."

"It isn't as though either Vince or Croatoan didn't have their own agenda to keep you near them," Duke muttered, and grit his teeth. Croatoan, the old bastard, still wanting to keep hold of all that remained of his dear darling Mara. As to Vince... Vince was just an old _pervert_.

"At least they took the Troubles from Haven in the end." Audrey leaned toward him and extended her hand.

Duke backed away from the immanent touch. "Don't." It wasn't as though it was going to _work_. People, things... everything just passed through him these days. It sucked not being real.

Audrey's hand pressed defiantly, and made contact.

"I--" Duke stuttered and stalled. His mind blanked. _What_...? "I realise this is going to sound cliche by now, but... Audrey, I can feel your touch."

***

"So, watching Nathan make breakfast has become the new highlight of your day?"

Duke's feet didn't make any noise on the sidewalk as they headed toward Nathan's house, him... _ghosting_ beside her. He interacted with her, but not really with his surroundings. A heaviness gathered in Audrey's chest. She also wondered if the stares she was picking up were about her particular appearance and _reappearance_ in town, or the fact she kept talking to thin air.

Duke said defensively, "He's cute when he's rumpled and sleepy. Besides, it's more fun than watching him argue with councillors over putting the town back together, or watching him mope and drink, which is basically every evening."

Audrey grimaced. Another stranger was looking her way, now. "Duke, do these people know me? I don't recognise any of them. Did Croatoan -- or Vince -- screw with my mind that much?" A shiver went through her at the very idea. She had forgotten, or let it slip her mind when she made the grand gesture, how much control the Barn had over her mind and being, and into just whose hands that control was being placed.

"No, it's Nathan and Dwight's plan to push the real estate and bring new people in to rejuvenate the town. I barely recognise anyone now, either. A lot of the survivors could hardly wait to pack up and leave, now they could leave."

"I want to leave," Audrey said determinedly, the thought breaking like a tidal wave over her. "Duke, we could _travel_. Finally, we could go see the world. Four hundred years, and apparently _I've_ hardly seen any of the world." Just years and years of alternating between the void and Haven. Dozens of short, fake lives...

"Yeah? You might have to wait on Nathan for that plan, unless you're not planning to take him with you."

She huffed.

"He's really dedicated to the restoration project. Also? You do remember the problem of _I'm dead_ in your great plan to travel the world?"

"I think maybe just your body is," Audrey mused. She waggled her fingers on the air at him. "Certainly all of that aether you had in you seems to be molding _something_ , some kind of... substitute... compensation... And it's not all lost, when I can still interact with that. Maybe if we explore the world, we can find something else that'll help. Audrey Parker -- the real one -- had seen some pretty weird things. Just because the Troubles might account for _some_ of the supernatural things in the universe, doesn't mean they account for all of them. There could still be something out there to help restore you."

"'Interacting' could be fun," Duke allowed, looking anxious and hopeful and, mostly, like he was trying to hide it. "As for the rest, all kinds of strange stuff in the world. It seems like someone ought to figure out how much of it really was accounted for by William and Mara's screwing about." His face scrunched up. "I wasn't bargaining on being put in _Nathan's_ shoes, though, pining for your touch. And you know he can't see me, right? Most people can't. Dwight did it once. Gloria, for a while. Didn't last."

They had reached Nathan's door. Audrey banged the knocker loudly. There'd been a few repairs made since she was last here... She squinted and concentrated on the impressions that flooded through her. It was all definitely starting to come back. She looked at Duke, remembering her last memories of him with a new clarity she didn't need, and had to blink the tears from his eyes.

"Still here," he said, noticing, and reached out a ghostly hand to her shoulder.

Noise from inside the house drew their attention back.

Then, the door opened and Nathan was standing within it, staring at her. The toothbrush in his hand dropped from his fingers and his shoulders hit the wall behind him as he automatically fell back. "You--"

Another round of denials, Audrey thought with an eyeroll, but he met her with his arms when she waded in to grab him. "Nathan!"

"You're back." He pressed his face into her neck, tall body curling over her. "You're really back."

"Yo, Nathan." She was aware of Duke sketching the air with his hands and keeping up a sarcastic monologue in the background. "Gonna ask me how I am? No? Greeting for your buddy? No? Acknowledge my existence today? No? Hey, didn't think so. Just like any other day, then..."

Audrey disengaged from Nathan with a sigh, clamping her fingers around his wrist to move his hand from old habit, but here and now he had no difficulty catching the cues that she was pulling away. "Nathan, first... we need to talk about something else important."

***

"Duke's here?" Nathan eyed the empty space Audrey had indicated suspiciously. "But I can't see him or hear him. Thanks for that dose of paranoia."

" _Nathan_ ," Audrey said critically.

"Well, can you imagine what he'd get _up to_?" Nathan said defensively. He blinked back the unfocused sting in his eyes fiercely, and tried to obscure his expression's attempts to crumble, covering up with a smirk.

There was a pause. Audrey said, "He says you're not fooling anyone and you care, you great big fake."

Nathan felt _dazed_ , words and reactions coming on autopilot. Audrey was back, and Duke wasn't.... Well, Duke wasn't exactly _here_ , but he wasn't dead-and-gone, either.

He waved his hand through the air where Audrey had indicated Duke to be.

"Stop," Audrey said sharply, and when he started to retreat, contrite, she ordered, "No, there. Stay there. Don't move."

"...Okay." Nathan didn't know what he was doing. Was his hand on Duke's chest, Duke's hand? He had the impression that Audrey was listening to the grumbles of someone else, so perhaps they weren't both going mad... As he stood still, there seeped through to him a distant impression that maybe there _was_ something interacting with his extended hand. He could feel things normally, now, of course, but this wasn't normal and he wondered if he'd have still felt it even if his nerve endings weren't back on-line. "Duke?" He looked at the space uncertainly. He still couldn't see anything.

"This isn't going to be easy," Audrey observed. "But, we're here. We're all still _here_ , despite everything. We can do this."

Her head turned to the space where Duke was, and her expression changed. Nathan risked pulling back his hand. His arm was starting to ache. He felt the presence shift and settle in next to his shoulder, and the line of Audrey's gaze adjust accordingly. "Maybe it's too early to -- Okay." She looked at Nathan. "He wants to know if you can leave Haven and the rebuilding project, and come away with us to explore the world."

Nathan stepped backward until his hip met a chair, its wooden feet shrieking against the floor as his weight jostled it. He sank down in it at his kitchen table. He brushed his hands through his hair and held there, bowed over, staring fixedly at the scarred wood and his own skin. How could he leave? So many things were in progress, and he owed so much... But Audrey and Duke were here, and Haven held nothing but trauma and darkness for either of _them_. How could he not go with them?

"Six months," he croaked finally. "Give me six months. To shepherd the current projects to completion. I'll take a leave of absence, then."

Audrey's head turned again as Duke spoke. Nathan wasn't sure which one of them was responsible for the words she said. "It's not exactly dropping everything to be with your true loves."

His mouth felt dry. "I've failed my responsibilities to this town too often before."

Audrey nodded slowly. "It did result in rather a mess, last time, Wuornos. Maybe caution is advised." She sounded tired, and Nathan thought that Duke's response was less positive, but not being able to see or hear it left that hard to be sure.

"Stay with me first for six months. Let me get everything in order." He gestured at the space and vague presence that was Duke. "Is this... is it even workable? How're we supposed to function like this? Relying on Audrey as intermediary, even for basic conversation, feels like something that's gonna get old fast. Can you even write a note?"

"Let me try something," Audrey said slowly. "I can touch him, so... maybe I can _ask_ the aether... to change its function. I don't think Duke controls it, consciously, quite the way that I do."

A brief pause and she added, "Croatoan was training me." To Nathan she explained, "Duke asked if I'd been talking to aether a lot. Now he's saying that he can _definitely_ see how this is going to get old fast."

She extended her hands and closed her eyes in concentration.

Nathan leaned back in his chair. He wasn't really expecting anything, but especially not the shock of seeing Duke's actual form slowly resolve at the end of Audrey's hands, his bared chest against her palm above his heart. Nathan lurched upright, toppling the chair, and gave an involuntary cry as his arms groped forward.

"Uh--" Duke started, warningly, before Nathan passed throguh him as though he wasn't there at all.

They stared at each other, and he discovered it was different, seeing Duke before him again, here and proven and real, then just Audrey _saying_ he was there, no matter how much he trusted Audrey. A million regrets and apologies surged up in him, but what could he actually _say_? Duke had asked him to do what he'd done. Duke had _asked him_... He blinked fiercely, eyes burning. His throat was raw around the words as he said, "Good to see you back."

"I've been back for _months_ ," Duke grumped. "You're just as sensitive as a rock."  


"Spying on me in the shower?" Nathan saw confirmation in Duke's oddly shy smirk.

"I think that's the best I can do, at least for now," Audrey grasped, swaying. They both reached for her. Duke was nearer, and caught her.

Nathan stared.

Duke... shrugged, a fraction nervously.

"We can't touch," Nathan said slowly. "But you can."

"It's a turnaround." Duke shuffled his feet.

"It's never stopped us before. And maybe we can still improve on it, one way or another," Audrey said.

"I think this is a _little different_ from Nathan's former problem," Duke said with exasperation.

Nathan felt his face giving way, finally, to a ridiculous grin, tinged by sadness but overwhelmingly full of a kind of relief for this second chance he'd never anticipated. "At least we can _talk_."

"Says you," returned Duke. "Now that's irony."

"Stop it," Audrey gasped, but laughing as she said it, clawing her hand to bunch it in Nathan's shirt and drag him closer so that she leaned on both of them. "Stop _arguing_. We're still here, we're still us, and with that for a start... we can _always_ figure the rest out."

END


End file.
